Monthly State Tax Collections

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Tax collections by states, collected monthly by the Census Bureau.

A new product from the United States Census Bureau provides monthly state tax collections. (1)The Census Bureau is producing new monthly selected state tax collections as an experimental product.

This monthly compilation measures monthly tax revenues of state governments based on a calendar month and will be published on a monthly basis. Data for sales taxes reported for a particular month generally represent taxes collected on sales made during the prior month. These data cover the fifty state governments, as well as all dependent state-level governmental entities.

While the state data records are ultimately derived from state government sources, the classification of taxes among the different categories is the responsibility of the U.S. Census Bureau. Therefore, when necessary, tax classifications were adjusted to meet the Census Bureau’s definitions and might differ from the actual classification or presentation as provided by some of the various state governments on their own reports. For example some states segregate motor vehicle sales from their general sales taxes, while the Census Bureau includes motor vehicle sales in the general sales tax category. See https://www2.census.gov/data/experimental-data-products/selected-monthly-sales-tax-collections/selected-monthly-sales-tax-collections-methodology.pdf.
The program’s page is Selected Monthly State Tax Collections.

I’ve created charts for each of the seven tax types. I also calculated the total for each state and the total for the nation, that is, for all states. I then calculated the value per resident for each state and the nation. I present the figures as the difference from the value for the nation. This makes it easy to spot states with taxes higher or lower than the nation. Because tax collections often have a high degree of seasonality, I charted smoothed values.

Of note, this data is for state government collections and does not include collections by other government jurisdictions like cities, counties, and school districts.

Data starts with April 2019 and is current through January 2022.

Monthly-State-Tax-per-Capita-General-Sales

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References

References
1The Census Bureau is producing new monthly selected state tax collections as an experimental product.

This monthly compilation measures monthly tax revenues of state governments based on a calendar month and will be published on a monthly basis. Data for sales taxes reported for a particular month generally represent taxes collected on sales made during the prior month. These data cover the fifty state governments, as well as all dependent state-level governmental entities.

While the state data records are ultimately derived from state government sources, the classification of taxes among the different categories is the responsibility of the U.S. Census Bureau. Therefore, when necessary, tax classifications were adjusted to meet the Census Bureau’s definitions and might differ from the actual classification or presentation as provided by some of the various state governments on their own reports. For example some states segregate motor vehicle sales from their general sales taxes, while the Census Bureau includes motor vehicle sales in the general sales tax category. See https://www2.census.gov/data/experimental-data-products/selected-monthly-sales-tax-collections/selected-monthly-sales-tax-collections-methodology.pdf.